Therefore, although Chen Yongfu will not participate in the Chunan offensive in the future, he is still concerned and even hopes that the South Route Army's operations will go more smoothly.
It is a pity that through this sand table simulation, which simulated the real situation as much as possible, it was difficult for the offensive force led by the Fifth Division to attack Linxiang.
A battle in Linxiang resulted in five thousand casualties, two to three thousand of which were the main force of the Fifth Division, which directly injured the Fifth Division.
It will be even more troublesome to fight later.
The sand table deduction is still not over yet. During the deduction, the South Route Army finally took Linxiang and opened the door to Yuezhou Prefecture after paying 5,000 casualties.
The follow-up will definitely continue to be deduced.
But before starting a new round of deductions, His Majesty Luo Zhixue arrived at the staff headquarters. He did not ask too much, but conveyed a new situation to the referee department represented by Xu Zhixian.
Add another force to the Ming army you play, and a new Ming army that is comparable to your own main force in terms of equipment, organization, morale and combat effectiveness.
The number of troops is rated as a mixed brigade, and the headquarters is Wuling, Changde Prefecture.
Xu Zhixian and others were quite surprised to hear that Luo Zhixue suddenly changed the conditions of the deduction. Although during several exercises, His Majesty liked to increase the strength and equipment of the troops playing the role of the Ming army.
But it was the first time that a mixed brigade was directly added to the Ming army's role-playing troops, which was completely modeled after its own main force.
But after the previous surprise, Xu Zhixian thought for a while and remembered something, and immediately whispered: "Your Majesty, could this be the new standard army created by Yang Sichang?"
Luo Zhixue nodded slightly: "Yesterday, the Internal Affairs Department of the Hanlin Academy arrested several spies sent by Yang Sichang and found out a more important situation. The new standard army trained by Yang Sichang has become an army. The training location is not what we thought before. Changsha, the three thousand new standard troops in Changsha are just a cover. Yang Sichang gathered his teachers, friends, relatives, and farmers' children in his hometown of Wuling to form a mixed brigade. That is Yang Sichang's real new standard army."
Hearing what Luo Zhixue said, Xu Zhixian said: "I didn't expect that Yang Sichang would still raise suspicions, let alone that he could actually create a new standard army of the size of a mixed brigade."
It is not a secret that Yang Sichang has set up a new standard army. Not only the senior officials of the Ming Dynasty know about it, but also many Ming court officials and officers and soldiers in Chunan know about it. Even the Great Chu Empire knows a lot about it.
The Military Intelligence Department of the military has also been paying attention, but Yang Sichang provided a blindfold to confuse the spies of the Military Intelligence Department.
Before Yang Sichang officially took over last year, he began to advocate for the establishment of a new standard army. After he officially took office, he arrived in Changsha and began to organize and train three thousand new standard troops with great fanfare. This is what the Military Intelligence Department of the Da Chu Empire learned.
According to the intelligence obtained by the Military Intelligence Department, Yang Sichang selected 3,000 elite soldiers from the guards in Changsha and Hengyang, and then distributed them with guns and artillery, and trained them using the Chu army's new tactics.
But several months have passed, and these three thousand new standard troops don't even have many muskets, and the artillery only has two two-and-a-half-pound field guns. It's still too early to officially become an army.
At the same time, these soldiers, including generals, were all former guardsmen, and their morale and morale were no different from those of the original guardsmen.
Therefore, after the Military Intelligence Department learned about these situations, although the generals of the Chu army paid attention to them, they did not take them too seriously. They were just a so-called new army of 3,000 people, and it was probably better to fight against the elites of the traditional Ming army. Soldiers need to be more relaxed.
This time in the sand table deduction, these three thousand so-called new standard troops were also included.
But I never thought that while Yang Sichang was creating a new standard army in Changsha with great fanfare, in fact, before he officially took office, he had already started preparing to establish a new standard army in his hometown.
This new standard army completely imitated the main force of the Chu army from the beginning of its training. From generals to soldiers, all were newly recruited.
The generals of this new standard army are centered on Yang family members and relatives. The leader of this new standard army is Yang Sichang's direct cousin Yang Sixing.
The other officers were all members of the Yang family, their relatives, and friends.
The soldiers were all poor men recruited from their hometown in Wuling.
The reason why Yang Sichang started it again was that since he wanted to learn from the Chu thieves, he must learn it thoroughly.
You can't just learn a gun, but also learn their inner makeup.
The main force of the Chu thieves are all newly recruited soldiers, and the officers are all trained by themselves. As for the generals from the old army who have surrendered and waited, they are all in the garrison...
Yang Sichang naturally learned to do this, so he started from scratch from generals to soldiers.
Of course, he still inevitably recruited some middle- and low-level officers who he thought were good talents from the Guard Army.
He kept the new standard army compiled and trained in his hometown in Wuling a secret. What he usually publicized to the outside world was the half-baked new standard army in Changsha.
The purpose is to give the Chu thief a hard blow at the critical moment.
The main external military intelligence agency of the Great Chu Empire, that is, the military intelligence collection of the Military Intelligence Department of the General Staff in southern Chu, should pay more attention to important areas such as Linxiang and Changsha, and secondarily to the Ming army in the cities on the front lines.
There is really not much attention paid to the hinterland behind the Ming army, and there is nothing special about the Wuling area, because there is no Ming army there, and it is not a strategic location. Naturally, the Military Intelligence Department cannot invest too much force in this direction.
In addition, in order to conceal it, Yang Sichang and others placed the place where the New Standard Army was trained in a remote place in the countryside. The spies from the Military Intelligence Department only paid attention to the situation in Wuling City, and rarely went to the countryside or even went into the mountains.
Another foreign intelligence agency is the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Commerce. Although this agency is also an intelligence agency, its daily business is generally focused on the official movements of the Ming Dynasty, private opinions and even the collection of business intelligence. It generally does not specifically involve military intelligence business. .
This also led to loopholes in the Da Chu Empire's intelligence investigation of the New Standard Army under Yang Sichang.
If the Internal Affairs Department of the Hanlin Academy hadn't caught the spies sent by Yang Sichang this time, and followed the clues to catch a more important aide under Yang Sichang who knew more about the inside story, I'm afraid they would still be kept in the dark now.
It's not surprising that he was kept in the dark. Information transmission is very slow these days, and the turnover of personnel is also very small.
Especially in some small places, if a strange face appears, it will easily attract the attention of the locals. If the stranger goes to inquire about some sensitive military information, it will easily be noticed by the local government. .
The Dachu Empire's external intelligence collection relied more on bribery and wooing local people. As for the spies sent by Wuchang, they usually took charge of the affairs of the local intelligence station, and specific intelligence collection often relied on various means to bribe and win over. , recruiting mainly local people.
This intelligence collection model has its advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes the intelligence agency of the Chu Empire can easily learn about Yang Sichang's recent activities, including who he met and what he talked about.
But until now, I don’t even know how many troops Yang Sichang has...
But now that he knows it, Luo Zhixue heard that the staff department was conducting a sand table deduction today, so he simply came over, told Xu Zhixian the news, and changed the conditions of the exercise.
According to this change, the sand table deduction quickly changed.
After the Chu army in charge of the attacking side captured Linxiang, they went straight to Baling, Yuezhou.
After Chen Yongfu, who played the role of the Linxiang garrison general, and He Renlong, the general who played the support force, joined together, they also quickly retreated south, and also took the garrison of Baling City, Yuezhou with them. In the end, more than 15,000 people died. The Ming army retreated to Changsha and merged with Changsha's original more than 10,000 garrison soldiers and 3,000 new standard troops.
After the attacking Chu army captured Baling, Yuezhou without any blood, they turned south to Changsha, then successfully reached Changsha Field and launched a fierce attack on Changsha.
But at this time, five thousand new standard troops emerged from the Wuling area of Changde Prefecture. They did not go to Changsha. Instead, they fought towards the Xiangyin area. The attackers left a regiment in the Xiangyin area. The garrison was no match at all.
As a result, Xiangyin was captured by the Ming army, which cut off the connection between the Chu army outside Changsha and the Baling area in the rear. It also cut off the Chu army's supply of grain, grass and ammunition under Changsha.
Subsequently, in order to avoid being trapped in a situation where they were short of food, grass and ammunition and were attacked from both sides, the Chu army chose to retreat from Changsha and turned back to encircle and suppress the 5,000 New Standard Army. As a result, the 5,000 New Standard Army turned around and ran away.
This time, the sand table deduction was carried out until about midnight. The generals from both sides, playing the roles of the Chu army and the Ming army, were racking their brains to come up with various responses.
At this point in the sandbox deduction, it can actually be declared that the Chu army failed in this sandbox deduction.
Because they attacked Linxiang and suffered heavy losses.
The attack on Changsha failed again, and he was finally forced to retreat.
According to normal circumstances, the follow-up should be for the Chu Empire to continue to increase its troops towards Changsha, and this means that the progress of the entire Chunan offensive will have to be delayed by at least one or two months, and it will also take a lot of time. The greater national power of the Chu Empire would even cause a series of reactions.
The result of this exercise also made a group of people led by Xu Zhixian very scared!
In the battle plan drawn up by the staff and the South Route Army, they had taken Linxiang and then Changsha smoothly. They never expected to encounter such a big resistance in Linxiang, let alone Wuling. There is actually a new standard army hidden with a strength of 5,000 people, and its combat effectiveness is no less than that of our own main force.
If this is an actual battle, it will put the Southern Route Army into a huge passive position, and even affect the entire empire's southward and eastward advance strategy.
Therefore, in the end, Luo Zhixue personally ordered the end of this sand table deduction and asked both parties to have a good night's rest and continue the deduction tomorrow based on the new situation.
